“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, the fingers of his other ring-lined hand slow-creeping between my knees like a spider.
I didn’t try to answer. I just brought my hands up to clasp the muscled, tattooed forearm of the hand that clutched me to him.
“I want you likethisfirst,” he rasped, burying his face in my neck, lips brushing skin, breath teasing me as he spoke. “You’re wet, but I’m gonna need more.”
If he kept talking to me this way, I might just come from that.
All my fantasies about him. I hadn’t let myself fully indulge in them. Because I’d been trying not to want something I couldn’t have. Someone who didn’t like me back. Couldn’t. Now he was hand-feeding my daydreams to me. More even than what I knew I’d wanted.
I trembled in his grip, trying not to fall apart just from words.
“Legs. Open,” he grumbled.
Caught, helpless to make any other move, I parted my knees as he’d ordered, but only slightly, suddenly timid again. Or maybe I wanted to test him? Tease him back.
For fun.
What was one more death wish?
“Are you really still afraid of me?” he asked, flipping his hand over, rings and knuckles gliding down my inner thigh, the promise of their picking up where they left off coaxing my knees open farther.
“Yes,” I murmured, which was true. But we both knew I also liked being a little—a lot?—afraid of him.
“Good answer,” he murmured into me, “you should be.”
Pinning me against him, tightening his grip on me, he flipped his hand again, fingertips trailing down, falling fast. I opened my legs for him a little more but then gasped when those fingers lost their warmth and softness along the way, turning to bone before he drove first and second into me.
I gasped—then moaned, legs collapsing open for him, fingernails of one hand digging into his arm while the other went to clasp him behind the neck.
His muscles tight, grip restricting, he disallowed me to watch while he laughed, that dark, soul-shaking voice taking over as he pumped those cold, hard digits into me before bringing them up to circle my clit.
I fell apart with a shriek as the orgasm that had been begging to rip through me came barreling down, merciless as him as it wrecked—wracked—my system.
Withthisdastardly ambush, there could have been no stopping it.
A low wail fell out of me while I quivered in his clutches, helpless but to submit to the pleasure as he ushered me through it, bone fingers prolonging the rippling aftershocks.
“Oh, it isincrediblyfucking dangerous,” he said, murmuring the words into my neck, “for me to know you were telling the truth about that.” He meant what I’d said at dinner. About still asking him on a date if I knew what he looked like under that hood.
Did he think I would lie about wanting him in his darker form?
Maybe he just hadn’t thought I’d meant itthatway.
No secret now that I had.
Ooohhhhh well.
“Helena, Helena,” he chuckled. “You’refuckednow.”
“Oh,” I uttered, an involuntary sound as, while he continued to hold me in place with his human hand, his skeleton hand—and arm—traveled up my torso, fingertips clicking against one another before they snuck under my bra, bony palm sweeping up to engulf and grip the whole of my breast.
I squirmed, pressing myself into him, the impression of his erection pronounced against my lower back, his touch making me long for him to make good on his threat. His latest one.
“You perfect luscious thing,” he groaned, his two voices mixing as if his control over them, over himself, had once again reached a critical point. His hard thumb brushed over my pebbled nipple, then wickedly back again, increasing my building want. “How shall I ravage you next?”
Again, he half unfurled, half shifted out from under me, his smoky essence catching me, guiding me back to the mattress.
Remaining corporeal amid the roughly human-shaped collection of smoke and shadows, his skeleton hand stole away my bra. Then, rematerializing on his knees in front of me in full human form, Grim tossed that last scrap of clothing away, as naked now as me. Something that had me staring wide-eyed at his daunting size.
